Audio and Video

A panel discussion on the role of theatre in the politics of post-conflict and state transformation.
Peacebuilding and state-building initiatives traditionally bypass the arts in favour of governance and economic reforms. However there is a growing awareness that culture is an important dimension of creating stable, peaceful and democratic societies. Theatre is an important space for connecting communities previously at war. To explore the potential of drama in conflict-affected societies, we bring together leading theatre, human rights and peacebuilding professionals. We will also show a short film of political theatre-making, by INTENT New Theatre, entitled Kosovo: Life and Liberty in a Young Country.

The Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit is pleased to invite you to a panel discussion and launch of Richard Youngs new book The Puzzle of Non-Western Democracy (Carnegie Europe). Calls for different models of democracy are becoming more widespread. Many politicians, diplomats and writers today argue in favour of non-Western models of democracy. Yet it remains unclear what such models look like. The debate over democratic variation needs to be taken more seriously, even if the concept of non-Western democracy is problematic. The international community can and should be doing more to foster democratic variation that is tailored to the specific conditions of different countries and regions. This book maps out the potential for such democratic variation.

In this lecture Dr. Javier Solana will outline the challenges the EU faces as it attempts to grapple with an economic crisis which has not yet subsided, unseen flows of refugees and war in Ukraine. The EU is currently dealing with a situation where the lines between external and internal security have become dangerously blurred. Dr. Solana will analyze both these and other challenges facing the European project, of a more political nature. These issues are also examined in ESADEgeo’s recent edited e-book ‘The Global Context: How Politics, Investment, and Institutions Impact European Businesses’, published as a part of the European Commission’s Jean Monnet project MEKBiz.

There is a growing sense of insecurity in many parts of the world, reinforced by policy responses that are ineffective and even counterproductive. Is global security policy failing and what can be done? What ideas and instruments can help us meet the security challenges we are facing? This panel brings together academics and practitioners with diverse expertise in the security field and marks the publication of The Handbook of Global Security Policy.

The summer of 2014 has been yet another season of misery at Europe’s southern frontiers. The unseaworthy boats carrying migrants and refugees towards an uncertain destiny and destination have again multiplied along Italian shores, despite the large investments in more patrols, surveillance and coordination at the borders. Elsewhere, in Spain and Greece, a similar story repeats. A decade on from the founding of Europe’s border agency Frontex, the challenges at the border seem as steep and intractable as ever. In this time, Europe has developed ever more complex initiatives for tracking, halting, returning and assisting undocumented migrants seeking southern European shores, involving an expanding range of sectors: European border guards and African security forces, humanitarians and policymakers, academics and intelligence experts, defence companies and data managers.

In this lecture, launching Zaid al-Ali’s new book The Struggle for Iraq’s Future, the author will provide a uniquely insightful interpretation of Iraq’s nation-building progress in the wake of the 2003 war. Al-Ali will argue that the 2005 constitution is illegitimate and established a system of government so extreme that it could never be implemented, creating a void that the country has been struggling to fill since.

Ed Vulliamy, who reported extensively on the mid-1990s war in Bosnia, will discuss his new book The War Is Dead, Long Live The War, examining its legacy 20 years later.
The year 2012 marks the twentieth anniversary of the onset of the worst carnage to blight Europe since the reign of the Third Reich - the Bosnian War. A hurricane of violence was unleashed by Serbian President Slobodan Miloševic and his allies, the Bosnian Serbs, in pursuit of a 'Greater Serbia'. An infamous campaign of 'ethnic cleansing' demanded the annihilation of all Bosniaks, Croats and other peoples through either death or enforced deportation, with any trace of their existence destroyed. Such brutality was presided over and tolerated by the so-called 'International Community' including, perhaps most vividly in the popular memory, concentration and death camps in our lifetime.

On 9 February 2012, Jonathan Steele, Francesc Vendrell and Professor Mary Kaldor discussed Steele's new book 'Ghosts of Afghanistan', a study of the Soviet and US wars in Afghanistan. The podcast of the event is available online.

Professor Mary Kaldor was invited to present her work on ‘security in transition’ at this year’s Falling Walls-conference on 9 November in Berlin. The Falling Walls conference is an annual global gathering of forward thinking individuals from 75 countries. Each year, 20 of the world’s leading scientists are invited to Berlin to present their current